Having a bit of PTSD.  Financially I feel back in a stuck place and where I have to “hope” things work out.  And it was because I wouldn’t face reality.  Things are different this time.  I have billable work coming in and things will be fine.  It’s not the same thing.  But it feels like the same thing.  The reality is that I didn’t put enough away for my trip.  I came home to rent for a new office place, two trips, bills bills bills and oh some more bills.

This place is dark.

I also saw an old love.  And I am reeling.  He is in a bad place post a very recent break-up but it opened up a very vulnerable place and he said things I have always wanted him to say.  He didn’t say it to get back with me.  In fact, that’s not what he needs.  But he recognized things I wanted him to say for six years and it felt good to hear those things.  It felt so good, that I want him to call and invite me back over and tell me things again and again.  That I mattered to him and that I matter in general.  I know when he says these things it’s true.  He doesn’t say things lightly and he’s one of the few men, I trust what he says as he doesn’t give that praise and vulnerability often.

Unfortunately in the past he is such a drought of words that show I matter that I end up feeling like a beggar.

It makes me feel so vulnerable to think I need to hear that and when I look around I realize that where I lost my intimacy with Moni when she moved, I didn’t replace it with anything that really sates me.  And I’m not exactly looking for that again but to hear it and to crave it, makes me feel sad.   I have plenty of people in my life that I have intimacy at a friend level with but I hold it back until it bubbles out and then I’m shocked that I needed it and that it exists in general.  I find I believe that it’s not possible for me to find that in a romantic way because I don’t know know myself enough to know what I need.

He asked why I married my ex and I said because I was in Love.  With a capital L. I ignored red flags, and friends telling me to abort/abort and looked past traits that I thought I could fix.  What he was very good at was filling up that place that begs to hear I matter.  He was very good at telling me how wonderful and special and amazing I was.  It was like crack to me.  I felt so loved and heard and understood until slowly the blinders fell away and I realized those were just words.  Hollow words.  There wasn’t action to them.  There wasn’t movement.  It was just words to prop up my ego so that I would continue to put up with his behavior and his lack of integrity.  I fell for it for five years.  Until I was broken, literally on the ground, half dead.  Having gained 100 pounds and with all of my savings gone, my house ruined, friends and family wary and realizing I had married someone who could never love me because he didn’t love himself.  He didn’t even know how to do anything but lie to get what he wanted.  And I fell for it.

How do I ever believe people again.  Hell I pretty much went back straight to that pattern the first time I was given a chance.  How do I ever get to a place where I don’t want to fix a partner.  Or that I can accept that no one is perfect.  How can I trust anyone to have my back when every person I have known romantically has let me down.  EVERYONE of them.  Myself especially included.

Forgiveness and kindness to myself is something I have been really working hard at, but I come back from truly one of the most incredible trips of my life and I don’t like what I see again.  I went to Israel and saw and experienced an amazing world.  I truly loved every minute.  I wanted to be awake early and going and seeing and doing.  I fell asleep each night worn out in a happy way.  It was easy to be friendly and not sarcastic around people and share these wonderful experiences with my Mother.  I wasn’t feeling forced or weird or fake.  I was authentic and it was amazing.  I come back from the trip and I can’t get out of my mode.  I can’t stop feeling and what I am feeling is not great.  It’s overwhelmed and guilty and shame and alone and broke and everything around me is needing repair or fixing or help and I can’t do it.

I feel too much and not enough exactly in the same moment.

In the morning if rain falls through the rain
I will remember that you came tonight
when lightening opened a door in the leaves.

If we were closer, I would say
I have wanted to speak with you
the way air speaks to the sky, sky to an open field,

the way if you sit outside something speaks.
the cicadas start their evening discourse early.

Not everything is the same.
Let me be to you
As rain is to rain.

Today I find I’m back in my head a bit.  After a particularly vulnerable date – which wasn’t because of him but that I attempted to show up authentically and the brain fuck it did to me, gave me a vulnerability hangover.  For days.  Luckily I had therapy that next day.  So what I did in that session was figure out … that I allowed someone to lead, take care of me (in limited ways) and enjoyed feeling safe from a masculine energy – which apparently was me trying to be authentic in that moment.  I actually allowed myself to feel shy and embarrassed (two emotions woefully under-represented in the mix) and it was a good day.  As me and my therapist say, dating is helping me work out so many of my issues . It’s like a petri-dish of what’s going to emerge.  LOVE THAT aspect of it.

What I figured out today, was because this particular person has removed the sexual aspect of this relationship or at least made it very slow, that has taken away my control.  My belief that I have control.  My sense of power.  My ability to “bring” something of value to the mix.  Because in my cross-wired brain, what I bring to the mix is a love of sex and sex.  Kind of like come for the fun, stay for the person.   And if that is off the table, what value do I have?  I know – I have value.  Or in theory, I know that but when confronted with someone just wanting to know me emotionally, mentally, what I like – and I can’t mirror back to them – then I have to you know be authentic.  I have to take the action that I matter.  That I have to put that back on the table and be there.

And therein lies the rub.  This giving a shit about yourself – isn’t for weenies.

I’m debating it.  I don’t think so, but it’s got some undercurrent to it.

I like things to be a bit known.  Not that you can control everything but I’m feeling the tug of discontent and the unknown.  My former partner situation isn’t resolving.  My current work situation is just a job and not sure financially it’s going to support me.  I am seeing several people dating wise and while it’s fun, it’s also sort of disconcerting because I’m not sure even what I want exactly and so it’s a feeling my way process which is even more disconcerting.

So much unknown.  So many shoulds, maybes and what-ifs.  I find myself in the morning, not exactly jumping out of the bed to face the day.  I find myself wanting a nap when I get home.  The process where I start to pull-back feels like it’s happening again.  I should probably up my meds a titch but it’s just something for me to think about.

I’ve been learning so much the last bit of time about saying “no” and how that is really saying that I matter to myself but also to others.  But when it comes to dating, that instinct starts seeping in.  It’s ok to make it all about someone else, and to think this is about courtship and being pleasing – but slowly but surely, I look up and see, holy shit, I’m doing it all again.

Making it all about the other person and letting it be ok, if my needs get shoved to the side or ignored.  I’m so thankful I’m learning body signals, even though they are making me squirm at being so new and uncomfortable.  At therapy, we didn’t even talk about the signals we talked about my Ex and my step-son and a thousand other things.  But again I heard the phrase “Did you get what you needed.”  It’s always said subversively and in relation to others when I feel I have over-extended myself.  And it’s mainly a trigger to myself to remember that it’s not all about everyone else.  I can ask for what I want. And I started hearing it.  I didn’t want to hear it.  I didn’t want to acknowledge it because this new thing was feeling so good.

But I did hear it.  And so I kind of slowed things down with the guy I’ve seen a couple times.  I might have thrown a monkey wrench in the whole thing.  It feels different, now we had that talk.  And every pore in my sick mind, wants to drive it back to the other place.  But there is a small voice, that is resonating deep in me.  It’s ok that if I have a bad day, I can expect someone to give a shit about it.  I can ask that other person to just talk about it.  It’s ok to have those needs, to ask to get my needs met.  Sure it makes me want to throw-up.  And sure it’s awkward, as I learn to do it.  But it’s the process not the destination.  If this one guy, doesn’t want to get to know all of me, then he’s not the one for me.

Somewhere in me, a very small seven year old inner child is happy.

So I meditated and asked all the shame inducing pieces of me to come forward and lets talk.  I did this quite a bit when working with my inner children during the intense therapy times of my early 30s and it really helped me identify parts of me and integrate in pieces of me for a much better, balanced person.  It’s super powerful and reminds me of The Fluent Self and her work with monsters and “destuckification”.  It’s basically calling out the subconscious and asking it to open a dialogue.  POWERFUL stuff if you are willing to dig in.

So the pieces that came forward were shocking even to me…

1.  A monster with three heads covered in stretchy black nylon pinned to box so it couldn’t move – with one head that was rage filled fighting the constraints, one sobbing uncontrollably and one that was just two ineffectual lobster like claws with no pinchers.

2.  My seven-year old just post molestation (who the crab monster was reaching for in a protective kind of way but couldn’t reach as it was pinned down)

3.  My 15 year old covered in body shame, barely able to be in clothing it felt so revealing and shame-filled

4.  My present state sitting there naked (eek) but with absolutely no body shame or nervousness

5.  Me as moderator which got so uncomfortable that I had to stop the meditation and create a higher evolved moderator source

I think that was all of them but there may be more that emerge.  I didn’t get very far as the normal “adult” moderator was so uncomfortable the mediation kept going off-course.  Finally I had to recreate it with a all-knowing kind of queen mother moderator so I could continue.

Normally I just talk to the pieces and we understand what is going on.

First one I started with was the the seven-year old.  She fucking let me have it.  Straight up.  I asked her what she needed and did the “I’m here to protect you” and she was like “No you aren’t.  You don’t protect us.  you continually put us in harms way and sacrifice us for other people and you don’t listen to what we say at all.”  It was justified rage and it hit me like someone filled up a pillow-case with bricks.  I immediately felt it in my gut where I always feel emotions and realized she was right.  In my desire to not be “afraid” of things, I will feel that fear and push forward.  In some instances, it’s great and gets me to overcome many things that others just stop doing because it’s uncomfortable.

But apparently in my desire to not live a sheltered and protected life, I apparently have put pieces of me in harms way.  Tender, vulnerable pieces of me.  I have again at a pretty core level sacrificed what I needed for what others wanted.   There were serious amounts of tears in therapy talking about that I had sacrificed a child (even if it’s an inner-child) and put that in harms way for something so temporary, and so base.  I know I have to go back and talk to the other parts of me but the 7 year old was so forceful and it was so apparent that I needed to digest her words, that I am working there first.  I’m sure I’ll call a shame roundtable again in the coming weeks and see who is there and what we need to work on but first things first, I have to address this, first, basic conversation.

So this week, it’s been on my mind.  I’ve been trying to think about if I am sacrificing what I need – then I best identify what I need and not in a general way.  Specifics.  I will be probably working on that here for the next few posts.  What do I need.

Dog Days Are Over

Happiness, hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her, stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with a drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Run fast for your mother run fast for your father
Run for your children for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind you
Can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses
‘Cause here they come

And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had
And what was left after that too. oh.

Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height
By someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses
‘Cause here they come

Run fast for your mother and fast for your father
Run for your children for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind you
Can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses
Because here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses
Because here they come

I have been in such a do mode, that I have forgotten to be still and let the creative part of me flow. My therapist did note that creative is tied in someways psychologically to the physical that I discussed in this post. In that regard what has made me feel stifled creatively has also allowed me to compartmentalize the physical yearnings. To unleash one, is to open a door for the other.

I say release the Kraken!